The muscles between your shoulder blades often get tired. When they are tired, they can sometimes get painful trigger points.
Trigger points are knots in muscles. They often cause pain, and they pull and make the tissue around it feel tight, and difficult to relax. Sometimes, they even cause pain farther away from where they are.
Trigger points between your shoulder blades can sometimes make your neck and even your head tense or painful, as the shoulder area.
Keeping the muscles strong (exercising) and using upright, tall posture can help prevent them.
But when they do come, try this as a way to get them to relax and for pain relief:
Do this as often as you need to. If it keeps coming back, see someone to help you try to keep it away! Don’t forget, strength helps!
- Stand near a wall or other (stable) vertical surface.
- Take a step or two away. Bend knees softly, reach back, and lower your back and hips to the wall. Rest there.
- Using a small ball in a sock (a racquetball or other small, firm but flexible ball or object, like a dog ball), grasp the handle in the hand opposite the side you want to treat first.
- Sling it over your shoulder, and using the handle, raise or lower ball until it is over one of the tender trigger points between or on your shoulder/shoulder blades.
- Relax back, trapping the ball.
- Drop your arms. Relax your head, face forward.
- Breathe deeply. Sink your body weight until you feel the tender point release a little.
- You may move your arm around, or even roll your shoulder a little, even as you continue to breathe and relax.
- Stay for up to a minute or so, or until you feel the tension release.
Other great spots:
• Behind your shoulder joint
• Under armpit, side of ribcage!
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